There is a respiratory virus, Enterovirus D68 that is moving quickly across the United States affecting young child. It is highly contagious and starts out like a common cold, but lasts much longer. It has affected over 1, 000 children so far and is growing. Children that suffer from Asthma are particularly vulnerable.

SYMPTOMS

Parents and caregivers should monitor their child closely, looking for any difficulty in breathing or speaking , shortness of breath or wheezing. If you are concerned seek immediate attention. The normal cold and flu symptoms like runny nose, coughs, sneezing and fever are present with this virus also.

TREATMENT

Hospitals and doctors are treating this virus with medication that they’ve been using for asthma. In the story I was following all of the children are better and recovering . I was very concerned because some cases were so bad that they had to be admitted to ICU. Some children lost consciousness due to difficulty with breathing.

PREVENTION

This is the time of the year where we should be advising our children and following this procedure ourselves of washing our hands more frequently. Instruct your children to cough or sneeze in their elbow to prevent spreading germs.

Even in my dance classes if someone has a runny nose I instruct them to blow and wipe their nose and then immediately wash their hands before returning back to class. I make sure they put soap on their hands and scrub thoroughly. Drying your hands are also very important, wet hands spread germs also.

Make sure you and your children are getting plenty of rest, eating more fruits and vegetables and drinking a lot more water and fluids. Citrus fruits have a lot of vitamin C and actually all fruits and vegetables are very helpful.

Stay healthy and alert to any warning signs, so you can respond quickly. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Wishing you a healthy and happy Fall season. Eat plenty of apples since this is a great time for them. Please feel free to share this on social media, your own site and with your family and friends.

I have an 18 year old daughter who to this day does not like cooked carrots. I couldn’t figure it out, when she was a baby she ate all kinds of vegetables in the form of baby food. But as she grew older probably around the age of 5 or 6 cooked carrots became this horrible thing.

One day while preparing a meal with carrots she grabbed a raw one. They were baby carrots, which I love and often times eat as a snack. She loved them. I stood looking at her in shock. You like them! I said to her, you like your carrots raw? She smiled up at me with this little cutie pie face and said “Yes, mommy.” I don’t know why but at the time it never dawned on me to feed her raw carrots as a part of a hot meal. At the time it didn’t make sense to me to have both raw and cooked vegetables on the same dinner plate. In my mind all of the food should be hot unless you’re eating a salad before the meal.

I had to open my mind and thinking and think about what was the ultimate goal that I was trying to accomplish. That goal was to get her to eat healthy foods and one of those foods was vegetables namely carrots. From then on I started to think creatively about how I could get her to eat fruits and vegetables and drink adequate amounts of water.

One of the techniques that I used when she was a baby that helped when she was a little older was to have her eat airplane food. I would put the food on the spoon and it would fly around on top of the spoon with these sound effects of an airplane flying around and then into her mouth. She thought the sound effects were great and it really worked well.

One great idea that I got from http://www.ChooseMyPlate.gov is “Delicious Dippers”. It’s under Kid-Friendly Veggies and Fruits: 10 tips for making healthy foods more fun for children. They talk about how kids love to dip their foods which is true. I notice this a lot in my preschools. They suggest that you make a quick dip for vegetables with yogurt and seasonings like herbs or garlic. The vegetables that they suggested were broccoli, carrots and cauliflower. I find that cucumbers, cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes depending on the age of the child and red peppers are great too.

I find that kids really love the act of dipping and often just love eating with their fingers anyway. You can also change it up a bit and use yogurt with cinnamon or vanilla dip with fruit chunks. Eating doesn’t have to be a bore and a chore we can make it fun and interesting too. Please share your healthy recipes for preschoolers and young children that have worked for you. I’d love to hear from you. Just leave a comment below. You can also share this with your friends and family on social media, email or whatever works for you.

Movement and play are essential for all babies to grow up healthy and achieve optimal development. I was reading several comments to an article written by an occupational therapist, a mother or three and has a PhD in Educational Psychology. This article was on crawling and the therapist and PhD gave her expert opinion on the fact that she felt it was instrumental in a child’s development. She also acknowledged that there are some babies that never crawled and were fine.

I couldn’t believe all of the argumentative and upset comments she got in response. Many people seem to get so defensive and wanted to slice the woman in two it seemed. To be fair not all of the comments were like this, there were many people who thanked her for the information and also agreed with her. What she was sharing was from her experience and training and she wanted parents to be safe rather than take any chances with their children’s growth and development.

To my surprise I read a comment from a mother whose son didn’t start crawling until he was a year old. He didn’t move in any way or even roll over until Read more »

We all know that being germ free is one of the keys to having a healthy life. Have you ever looked at if you are really doing a thorough job of cleaning your hands. It is so important to do a really good job and allowing the proper amount of time and getting all of the areas where germs can possibly live.

One of my readers, Kristin S of http://www.pinterestventure.blogpost.com, commented on a post I had written on teaching kids to get into the habit of washing their hands often and thoroughly to avoid germs. You can read about it here:http://www.pitterpatterfeet.com/childrens-health-start-healthy-habits-early/.

Kristin remembered doing an experiment in college where she and her classmates rubbed simulated germs on their hands and washed them off really well. They then looked at what was left under a black light. She found that there was a ton of germs left up by her wrists and in the fingernail beds.

I was really surprised. I had heard about making sure you clean under and around your nails but had never heard about the wrist area. That was such a new and interesting fact that I decided to write about it. I felt that there were probably a lot more people like me that had never heard of that.

Toni Nelson of http://www.toninelsonmeansbusiness.com mentioned that she had read some studies that were done that showed the amount of germs on door handles. This was something I was familiar with, which is why after you dry your hands with the paper towel you are to use that paper towel to open the door to leave the bathroom.

Speaking of bathrooms Dinaa Dove of http://www.dinadove.com shared that she had heard that toilet seats themselves were some of the most germ free environments. Can you imagine that? When I thought about it again it makes sense. This is because most germs are transmitted through the hands and people’s legs are sitting on the toilet. So I could see how that could be.

Bottom line make sure that you and your children get in the habit of washing the entire hand, fingernail beds and wrists. Also remember to wash for enough time, 2 verses of Happy Birthday should do the trick or if you have preschoolers whatever song they learn in school.

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading this. Please share this with family and friends and please leave a comment below on your experiences with germs and avoiding them and cleaning. Have a great day!!!

As an Early Childhood Consultant and Trainer, I have the wonderful and amazing opportunity to work with children from infancy up to school aged. While I have loads of fun working with my students and teachers one thing was not fun, getting colds. When I began working in childcare centers I could not believe I often I got colds. It is no fun trying to do your job sneezing and hacking all over the place. You feel miserable, your head is pounding or you’re all stopped up, it’s terrible. You also don’t want to spread germs to the children and other staff members. The babies and children were cute and adorable but the germs weren’t. In a child care setting there are steps you can take to keep the spread of germs down.

One easy place to start is with hand washing. This might seem obvious and you might do it and teach your children to do it, but are you doing it correctly. There are 9 steps to correct hand washing. Nine steps you say you’ve got to be kidding. No I am not, I was very surprised too, but after reviewing them it all made sense. In a child care center there is a lot of sharing and touching going on. Also because there is not a lot of space per person and children and adults are in close proximity to one another it is very easy to spread germs.

It is recommended that a hand washing poster be posted in bathrooms to remind children and staff the correct way to wash hands and avoid germs. This is also a great practice when you’re out and using public restrooms. Since children spend much of their time in school, this is a great place to start.

1. Check and make sure you have all of your supplies. like paper towels and soap. If possible avoid those air dryers. Paper towels are much more useful.

2. Turn on the water, it should be between 60-120 degrees.

3. Moisten hands and apply liquid soap.

4. Rub hands together and all over out of the stream of water, making sure to get in between the fingers and both the inside and outside of the hands. You should rub vigorously for at least 20 seconds or the time it takes to sing the “Happy Birthday” song. In some of my schools they have a Hand Washing Song. It is sung in the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.

Scrub, scrub, scrub your hands .

Get them nice and clean.

Scrub all over, in between.

Get them nice and clean.

5. Rinse under running water and leave water running.

6. Dry hands with a paper towel.

7. Turn off the water using paper towel.

8. Throw away the paper towel in a lined garbage can.

9. Use hand lotion as needed. I didn’t think this was such a big deal at first until the instructor who is a nurse, explained how you didn’t want your skin to get cracked from dryness because that was an opportunity for germs to get in.

Since most germs are spread by hand, keeping your hands and your children’s hands clean and moisturized will do a lot in helping to cut down on the amount of germs. How do you help to prevent the spread of germs? Please share them with us, we’d love to hear from you. Please share this post with your friends and family and also comment below.